Cagey
Is Here, And Faye Has A Very Good Soldier Cook, So The Little Mess,
Including The Doctor, Is Simply Fine.
I am famished all the time, for
everything tastes so delicious after the dreadful hotel fare.
The two
horses are here, and I brought my saddle over, and this morning Faye
and I had a delightful ride out on the plain. But how I did miss my
dear dog! He was always so happy when with us and the horses, and his
joyous bounds and little runs after one thing and another added much
to the pleasure of our rides.
Fort Benton is ten miles from camp, and Faye met me there with an
ambulance. I was glad enough to get away from that old stage. It was
one of the jerky, bob-back-and-forth kind that pitches you off the
seat every five minutes. The first two or three times you bump heads
with the passenger sitting opposite, you can smile and apologize with
some grace, but after a while your hat will not stay in place and your
head becomes sensitive, and finally, you discover that the passenger
is the most disagreeable person you ever saw, and that the man sitting
beside you is inconsiderate and selfish, and really occupying two
thirds of the seat.
We came a distance of one hundred and forty miles, getting fresh
horses every twenty miles or so. The morning we left Helena was
glorious, and I was half ashamed because I felt so happy at coming
from the town, where so many of my friends were in sorrow, but tried
to console myself with the fact that I had been ordered away by Doctor
Gordon. There were many cases of typhoid fever, and the rheumatic
fever that has made Mrs. Sargent so ill has developed into typhoid,
and there is very little hope for her recovery.
The driver would not consent to my sitting on top with him, so I had
to ride inside with three men. They were not rough-looking at all, and
their clothes looked clean and rather new, but gave one the impression
that they had been made for other people. Their pale faces told that
they were "tenderfeet," and one could see there was a sad lacking of
brains all around.
The road comes across a valley the first ten or twelve miles, and then
runs into a magnificent canon that is sixteen miles long, called
Prickly-Pear Canon. As I wrote some time ago, everything is brought up
to this country by enormous ox trains, some coming from the railroad
at Corinne, and some that come from Fort Benton during the Summer,
having been brought up by boat on the Missouri River. In the canons
these trains are things to be dreaded. The roads are very narrow and
the grades often long and steep, with immense boulders above and
below.
We met one of those trains soon after we entered the canon, and at the
top of a grade where the road was scarcely wider than the stage itself
and seemed to be cut into a wall of solid rock. Just how we were to
pass those huge wagons I did not see. But the driver stopped his
horses and two of the men got out, the third stopping on the step and
holding on to the stage so it was impossible for me to get out, unless
I went out the other door and stood on the edge of an awful precipice.
The driver looked back, and not seeing me, bawled out, "Where is the
lady?" "Get the lady out!" The man on the step jumped down then, but
the driver did not put his reins down, or move from his seat until he
had seen me safely on the ground and had directed me where to stand.
In the meantime some of the train men had come up, and, as soon as the
stage driver was ready, they proceeded to lift the stage - trunks and
all - over and on some rocks and tree tops, and then the four horses
were led around in between other rocks, where it seemed impossible for
them to stand one second. There were three teams to come up, each
consisting of about eight yoke of oxen and three or four wagons. It
made me almost ill to see the poor patient oxen straining and pulling
up the grade those huge wagons so heavily loaded. The crunching and
groaning of the wagons, rattling of the enormous cable chains, and the
creaking of the heavy yokes of the oxen were awful sounds, but above
all came the yells of the drivers, and the sharp, pistol-like reports
of the long whips that they mercilessly cracked over the backs of the
poor beasts. It was most distressing.
After the wagons had all passed, men came back and set the stage on
the road in the same indifferent way and with very few words. Each man
seemed to know just what to do, as though he had been training for
years for the moving of that particular stage. The horses had not
stirred and had paid no attention to the yelling and cracking of
whips. While coming through the canons we must have met six or seven
of those trains, every one of which necessitated the setting in
mid-air of the stage coach. It was the same performance always, each
man knowing just what to do, and doing it, too, without loss of time.
Not once did the driver put down the reins until he saw that "the
lady" was safely out and it was ever with the same sing-song, "balance
to the right," voice that he asked about me - except once, when he
seemed to think more emphasis was needed, when he made the canon ring
by yelling, "Why in hell don't you get the lady out!" But the lady
always got herself out. Rough as he was, I felt intuitively that I had
a protector.
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